Hi-boy on stilts

Years ago, when farmers were
doing anything they could to wring a little more horsepower out of their
tractors, a guy told me, “Sometimes, all the horsepower you can get is just
barely enough.”

I thought of that as I
pondered how Gibson City, Illinois, farmer and custom operator Don Birky and
his son, Matt, are adding more clearance to their high-clearance applicators.
In the September issue of Successful Farming magazine (p. 49), I wrote about
the RoGator they modified this summer so that it had over 10 feet of clearance
for seeding cover crops in mature corn a few weeks before harvest.

Two years ago, responding to
customer demand for ground application of fungicides, they bought a John Deere
6500 Hi-Boy and modified it so it has 8.5 feet of clearance. “Now we can go
through 10- or 11-foot-tall corn with no problem,” says Don Birky.

Modifying the John Deere was
fairly simple. “It was a much easier job than modifying the RoGator,” says
Birky. “It only took about three days.”